


Secrets in the Garden

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Cultural Differences, F/F, F/M, Family, Gen, Honor, Love, Political Marriages, Politics, Romance, Secrets, Trust, canon typical homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 17:10:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15778443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: In a palace garden, Shinko and Roald stumble across a secret.





	Secrets in the Garden

**Author's Note:**

> Vania's sexuality seems to fluctuate in Tammy's interviews. In some interviews, Tammy told us she is a priestess (perhaps compatible with an attraction to woman that is restricted by society), in others she says Vania is attracted to women, others that Vania and Lianne were destined for political marriages, and in others she says that she doesn't know the sexualities of the younger Conte children so I wrote Vania as attracted to women but left open the possibility for a political marriage or the life of a priestess in her future. It's my way of reconciling the quasi-canon as well as I can.

Secrets in the Garden

The feast—seven long courses that made Shinko wonder how much of her bulging belly was the baby growing inside her and how much was bloating from the extravagant meal—was over and the orchestra was swelling into the first song that announced the evening’s dancing had begun. As the king bowed to his queen and swept her into a whirl around the floor, Shinko bit back a sigh at the constricting waistline of even the most flowing Eastern style gown. A Yamani kimono would have been infinitely more practical and breathable but of course it was impossible for the heir to the throne’s wife to wear anything less than traditional Tortallan attire to a formal banquet. 

Shinko would have to suffer in silence as so many pregnant Tortallan ladies before her must have. Though her lungs ached at the mere thought of dancing when her fancy dress made breathing difficult, she resolved to be calm and pleasant—the picture of polite serenity—for her husband and his people. She would be the perfect princess she had been born to be, her quiet dignity a testament to her proud imperial bloodline. 

Tonight she would no more shame herself with complaints than she ever had. Instead she contented herself with quick, cooling flicks of her fan as she rose, arm tucked in Roald’s. Her husband must have sensed her unvoiced distress however for he leaned close to murmur into the shell of her ear, “Shall we take some air in the gardens before we dance, my dear?” 

“A stroll in the gardens would be lovely, thank you.” Shinko nodded and permitted herself to be steered toward the opened doors leading onto a wide terrace that itself streamed into garden pathways. Even with the soft summer breeze blowing through the doors, the banquet hall was stuffy from the hundreds of courtiers and the legions of servants who attended to their needs. The wind against her face and the sweet aroma of flowers would refresh her body and spirit because as Yamani wisdom maintained there were few afflictions that couldn’t be cured by the appropriate dose of nature. 

Guilty that her weakness—even in her pregnancy, she should have been stronger than this—had taken him away from an important political event, she went on as they stepped off the terrace onto a cobbled path that meandered through green shrubbery carved into elaborate sculptures , “I apologize for distracting you from your duties.” 

“You’re never a distraction from my duties since I have a duty to you, Shinko.” Roald kissed her hair with a quiet intensity. “Besides I’d welcome a distraction from my duty after discussing legalities with my lord of Disart all evening.” 

Shinko smiled slightly as she evaded a puddle from a recent rainstorm—the rejuvenating scent of which still clung to the leaves around her—that had accumulated in an indent between cobblestones. The Lord of Disart had been seated in a place of honor to Roald’s left, while she, of course, had been in the chair to Roald’s right, and had taken advantage of this lofty position to pose endless questions about due process and civil procedure to Roald from the first courses of venison and wild boar from the Royal Forest until the sweet tarts and candied fruits were cleared away by the servants, marking the conclusion of dessert and feast alike. 

Shinko understood that such questions were meant as compliments to her husband’s knowledge and judgment of Tortallan law rather than tests of them, but still she knew that they took a toll upon him especially since they tended to come from conservatives who distrusted his parents or who were alienated by their reforms. Since his birth, Shinko realized from her whispered conversations and confidences with Roald, the conservatives had been determined to put her husband into delicate political situations until he had become deft at dealing with them. 

“Let me distract you now then.” Shinko trailed her fingers along his sleeve in the way that made him shiver with desire for her when they were alone in bed. That would comfort and thrill him in equal measure, reminding him that for this short stroll in the gardens they had escaped the politics that governed their lives as pervasively as any tyrant. 

Unfortunately, they weren’t the only couple that had sought romantic refuge in the garden tonight. From behind a bush ahead of them, a trill of laughter that Shinko recognized as the sound of Vania’s irrepressible merriment emerged from between the tangle of branches. 

“Gisela, it tickles when you kiss me there.” Vania’s strangled squeal made Roald stiffen beside Shinko. Gisela was one of Vania’s friends among the Riders although Shinko had always suspected that the glances Vania swapped with Gisela were too longing and the touches too lingering for friendship without attraction. 

Squinting up at her husband’s tightening face in the lantern lit darkness, Shinko saw that he must have nursed the same suspicions about his sister as she had even if he had never shared such a secret with her. 

“If you’ve had enough fresh air, perhaps we might return to the banquet.” Roald’s phrasing was polite as ever but there was a terseness to his voice that made Shinko imagine him as an impenetrable wall of perfect manners, deliberately inscrutable to avoid acknowledging anything that might shame his family. 

Shinko’s comment about sexual relations between those of the same gender especially among the warrior classes being more celebrated than frowned upon in the Yamani Islands withered on her tongue like grapes on a vine during a drought. Roald’s abruptly distant demeanor reminded her more strongly than scornful words that in Tortall such activities were pursued in secret so as to prevent shame from being heaped upon oneself and one’s family. It was an attitude Shinko couldn’t quite fathom but it meant Shinko had to tread delicately around such an issue in the Conte family. 

“Some dancing would do wonders for my health and spirit.” Shinko kept her tone light as the flickering orchid petals on her fan that she pretended to be fixated upon to prevent Roald from feeling that he had lost face before her. “I hope you know, Roald, that your secrets—your whole family’s secrets— are mine. I’m honor bound to preserve them as my own.” 

“I would never question your honor, my love.” Roald’s words were whisper-soft but his eyes remained faraway, lost in shadowy contemplation of his youngest sister and her paramour. “It’s just that some secrets are best left unspoken even between those who trust each other absolutely.” 

Vania and Gisela seemed to dog Roald’s heels throughout that night’s dancing, and when the evening’s entertainment finally ended, they haunted him in the bed he shared with Shinko if the way he tossed fitfully beneath the blankets was any indication. 

Delicately, fearing another courteous stone wall she couldn’t smash through, Shinko murmured, “If you’d like to talk about what’s bothering you, darling, I’m ever ready to listen.”

“Forgive me for disturbing you when you and our baby need rest.” Roald rolled out of bed. “I’ll walk off some of my anxiety and leave you in peace.” 

“You leaving wasn’t what I had in mind, nor was an apology.” Shinko drew Roald back onto their pillows. Pressing her cheek against his, she added, “You confiding in me was what I had in mind. Then you can get some sleep too.” 

Roald was silent for a long moment and Shinko worried that he would politely rebuff her again, but in the end, he curled closer to her in the darkness and sighed against her earlobe. “I’ll have to speak with Vania about carrying on her affair with Gisela somewhere more private than the palace gardens. Somebody who isn’t family could easily stumble upon her and Gisela there, and even family might not be understanding of her romance with Gisela if they discovered proof of it.” 

“You do understand Vania’s romance with Gisela then?” Shinko kneaded the knots from Roald’s shoulders, trying to keep her tone neutral rather than permitting her hope that Roald might be able to understand her acceptance of her beloved brother, whom she had never confided to Roald was interested in men instead of women because she couldn’t be certain that her husband didn’t harbor traditional Tortallan views on such attractions. 

“I can’t understand since my interests are more conventional.” Roald shook his head, and Shinko felt her heart stop, the waves of her hope breaking against the rocks of reality, until he went on, fierce with a passion he rarely allowed himself to show, “I don’t need to understand to love her, though. The priests and priestesses say its wickedness for Vania to act on her feelings for another woman. Maybe it is a wickedness, but if it is, I don’t care. That doesn’t change the fact that she’s no matter who she loves, and I’ll always love her because she’s my sister.” 

“That’s how I feel about my brother.” Shinko’s hands trembled as she massaged Roald’s neck and shared a secret she thought she might take to her grave before revealing to her husband. “In the Yamani Islands, it’s not considered a disgrace or a wickedness for a man to love another man or a woman to love another woman.” 

“Soon Vania will wish she lived in the Yamani Islands.” Roald leaned into Shinko’s touch. “Even if she’s subtle in her affair with Gisela, I doubt she has much more than a year before Papa issues an ultimatum, telling her she must be married to the temples or for politics.” 

There was a note of resentment in Roald’s tone that Shinko sought to erase with a kiss on his neck. “Marriages for politics aren’t always unhappy, Roald.” 

“No man knows that better than I do, Shinko.” Roald tilted his head to plant his lips against hers and they lost themselves in each other.


End file.
